He snorted. “Turtle. Another lie told by the parasites. Oh yes, the desert people are the special chosen ones. Chosen to be prey for the parasites!” He squatted again in front of her. His face was too close. “You don’t believe me. I can see it in your eyes. But you will, once you have tasted the freedom that the empire has to offer.”

She shrank back. “When will I be able to speak with the emperor again?”

“The emperor will grant you sanctuary, I can assure you,” Mulaf said. “In time you will understand that you are safe here.”

“Am I?” She breathed the scent of his breath, sour as rancid goat’s milk.

“Oh yes, Bayla’s vessel. You never need to fear your goddess again.”

She forced herself to sit still while everything inside her shrieked. He knows! She wanted to leap at him and force the truth out of him. Tell me what you’ve done to her! But in the heart of the empire’s army, she didn’t dare move.

The magician rose to his feet. “Welcome to the Crescent Empire, Liyana.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Alone, Liyana huddled in the center of the tent. Sweet Bayla, what have I done? She’d walked willingly into a cage, as stupidly as a goat to slaughter. She wrapped her arms around her knees as waves of terror crashed over her.

She didn’t know how much time had passed while she had been trapped inside her own fear, but minutes or hours later, a soldier shoved the tent flap open and strode inside. He wore the white uniform with a red scarf, but his shoulders were decorated with swirls of gold. His face had the same pinched look as the others she’d seen, but he was older, so the flesh hung on his cheeks like loose cloth. Based on his age and the gold on his shoulder, she guessed he was an officer, perhaps even a high-ranking one. He bowed. “The emperor requests that you join him for dinner.”

She tried not to look as surprised as she felt. Standing, she smoothed her skirt. “I’d be delighted.” He led the way out of the tent, and she followed.

She couldn’t imagine why the emperor had requested her. Had he connected her with Pia and Raan? Or Korbyn and Fennik? If so, why honor her with dinner? Reaching the emperor’s golden tent, the officer raised the flap. As the guards watched her, she was shepherded inside and then, again to her shock, was left alone with the emperor.

Surrounded by embroidered pillows, the emperor sat on a gilded chair. “Please, join me,” he said. He indicated a second chair across a table.

She sat, feeling like a bird on an awkward perch. She was far more used to pillows or, lately, sand. The table between them was inlaid with a mosaic of smooth stones. It depicted a river running through green farmland. It was an utterly impractical item for a tent. “You are usually a stationary people?” she asked. She gestured at the table, as well as the massive wood desk and the shelves with the glass sculptures.

“Indeed,” the emperor said. “Our land feeds us where we live—or did until the Great Drought began.”

“I hadn’t known the drought touched the empire too. I . . . am sorry to hear it.” Liyana wondered if Raan had seen the gaunt faces of the soldiers and realized what they meant. She’d wanted so badly for the empire to be the answer.

“My empire and your desert . . . We are all one land. The Great Drought affects us all.” He leaned forward. “But together, we can survive it. We are here to offer . . . cooperation. The desert people cannot survive alone.”

“We are not alone,” Liyana said. “With our deities, we will survive it.” Raan had been so hopeful when they had neared the border. The truth must have crushed her.

“And you would have given your body to your deity to ensure that?”

She wondered what the magician had told him and whether the emperor believed she had escaped and wanted sanctuary. She chose a cautious answer. “I was chosen to do so.”

“A shame,” he said.

In that one word, she heard the condemnation of her people’s choices, their stories, and their way of life. It was worse than Raan’s condemnation. This stranger with his silk robes and jeweled fingers dared pass judgment on her people, when her people had survived the harsh desert for a thousand years. “My clan deserves to live, and I was honored to grant them that life.”

“The empire can grant them life if they join us.”

“How can it if it can’t feed its own people?” she countered.

Abruptly he rose. She thought for a moment that she had gone too far and angered him. She waited for him to summon his guards, but instead he paced the breadth of the tent. At last he halted directly before her. Light from a lantern flickered over his face. “I have dreamed of an oval lake in a lush, green valley. Granite cliffs surround it, and it laps at a pebble shore. This lake holds the answers.”

Liyana felt as though her ribs had pierced her lungs. He’d described her lake, the one she pictured when she worked magic, in perfect detail.

Before she could formulate a response, servants entered the tent carrying an array of trays. One carried a silver platter of fluffed breads. Another held a bowl of fruit on his head. A third brought a tray of steaming spiced meats. The servants placed their bowls and platters on the mosaic table, bowed, and retreated.

The emperor sank into his chair. She thought she saw tiredness around his eyes. He focused on the feast before them, but she suspected that he wasn’t seeing it. She wondered what thoughts were churning in his mind and how the emperor of the Crescent Empire could have dreamed of a lake she’d imagined.

“Tell me about the Dreaming,” the emperor said, eyes on her. All trace of exhaustion vanished. He seemed intent on her response.

“Once, the raven and the horse had a race. . . .” She told him the story of Korbyn and Sendar, and how Korbyn had bent the desert in the Dreaming in order to win. “The Dreaming is a place of pure magic.”

He nodded as if the story had pleased him. “And the lake is made of that same magic, spilling into our world through the rift made by the star. Your magicians and your deities draw their power from that lake.”

“I . . . I have heard that magicians imagine a lake to symbolize the source of magic.” She didn’t want to admit that she had done so herself in defiance of tradition. “But I don’t believe that it exists.” She had simply imagined it. Korbyn hadn’t even described it. Certainly not the granite cliffs or the pebble shore . . . “Stories are sometimes just stories.”

“Nothing is ‘just’ a story,” the emperor said. He reminded her of an ember, quietly burning but with the potential inside to explode into a wildfire that would chase across the grasslands and destroy all life. “The lake is real.”

“I don’t believe—”

“There is a man, one of my soldiers, who has seen it. But the lake is guarded by glass sky serpents.” He pulled Jidali’s knife out of a pocket in his silk robes. “Your people know about the sky serpents. Tell me what you know. Tell me how to defeat them!”

“I know of no one who has defeated them,” Liyana said. “And the sky serpents guard the mountains, not a lake.”

“Tell me of the sky serpents and the mountains.”

“Once, the sky serpents preyed on the people of the desert. Arrows could not pierce their scales. Swords could not slice their skin. The serpents attacked men, women, and children, and they left death in their wake. Seeing the destruction and fearing for their clans, the gods bargained with the sky serpents. The sky serpents would not harm any of the desert people, and in return no human would ever set foot in the mountains—”

He leaned forward, his hands clasped in front of him, his face alive with excitement. “You have never wondered what lies within those mountains? If there are peaks, there must be valleys! And if there are valleys . . . one of them could hold the lake.”